Jeffrey S. Solochek, Times Staff Writer

Jeffrey S. Solochek writes about schools and education for the Tampa Bay Times. Solochek has covered the school districts in Hernando, Hillsborough and Pasco counties since joining the Times in 2000. He also oversees The Gradebook education blog.

With Florida's new computerized testing system still struggling to perform, two state senators sent Gov. Rick Scott a letter urging him to call the whole thing off.

"It was not as if this impending catastrophe came without warning," Democrats Jeff Clemens of Orlando and Dwight Bullard wrote. "Superintendents, administrators and teachers, as well as legislators, from across the state have continued to steadfastly declare that we, as a state, were not ready to handle this testing system. Their please were ignored by the Department of Education, which now claims that only a few thousand students were unable to test on March 2. This is such a terrible twisting of the truth as to be almost unbelievable."...

As anticipated, the Florida House K-12 subcommittee has put forth a bill to address the clothes kids wear to school.

Cloaking the issue as one of student safety, the Students Attired for Safe Education bill aims to limit students' wardrobe choices to, essentially, solid colored pants or skirts, and collared shirts. Students would be encouraged to "express their individuality through personality and academic achievements, rather than outward appearance."...

Florida education commissioner Pam Stewart told school district superintendents shortly after 7 a.m. that her department and testing vendor AIR had located and fixed the cause of Monday's computerized testing problems.

She advised that schools can begin testing again as soon as they wish, and that the online effort should be vastly improved. Several districts already have canceled testing for today. UPDATE: Shortly after the memo came out, Hillsborough schools experienced similar problems as occurred Monday and told schools they could discontinue testing. See the breaking story here....

Dade City residents' complaints about moving classes away from Pasco County's Moore-Mickens Education Center have not impacted the school district's decision.

This week, the School Board plans to put an exclamation point on superintendent Kurt Browning's proposal with its 2015-16 allocation formula, a document with long-range implications that usually goes relatively unnoticed. In it, the district establishes how many of each kind of employee is required for schools and departments....

The debut of Florida's new computerized testing system stumbled in its first hours Monday, as more than half of the state's school districts reported trouble accessing material online.

Thousands of eighth-, ninth- and tenth-graders attempting to log in at the same time appeared to overload the system, causing a slowdown that prompted many schools to call off the writing test for the day. Among the details:...

State Sen. Alan Hays' bill that would require middle and high school students to watch the conservative-leaning film America: Imagine the World Without Her has garnered reams of press since he filed it in November.

Yet in the halls of Tallahassee, his highly publicized effort is not gaining much steam. Some observers have suggested it is one of the least likely bills to make it to Gov. Rick Scott's desk, much less out of its first committee....